


In Which Obito and Sakura are Soulmates

by phoenixyfriend



Series: Blame Tumblr Prompts [20]
Category: Naruto
Genre: (mostly Kakashi's honestly), Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, F/M, Gen, Happy Ending, Present Tense, Resurrection, Sometimes you need a little necromancy for that happy ending, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-27
Updated: 2016-11-27
Packaged: 2018-09-02 15:33:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8672800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phoenixyfriend/pseuds/phoenixyfriend
Summary: Written for the tumblr prompt: Obito/Sakura soulmate au the one where your soulmate's name is on your body, prompted by the-roadkill-cafe





	

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote the first few scenes from Kakashi’s perspective, because he’s the only one that really knew both of them. After that it switches to Sakura.
> 
> There is no minor/adult relationship in this fic. Or any of my fics. Sakura is an adult by the time she meets Obito in a setting that doesn’t involve a war.
> 
> Other than that, it’s a pretty generic fic, which you can read as either romantic or platonic, depending on how you feel.

 

Obito’s soul mark does not say _Rin._

(Rin doesn’t have a soul mark at all, much like Kakashi. Rin sees it as a sign that she can choose whom to love. Kakashi sees it as a sign of no chains binding him down, keeping him from being a perfect shinobi.)

(They both see their lack of a mark as a sign of free will, in the end, but Rin’s interpretation is much happier.)

Obito’s mark is written in a feminine hand, and slightly scratchy, like whoever writes it is accustomed to doing so in a rush. _Sakura,_ it says. No last name, but that’s not all that unusual. Some people only get first names as marks. Some only get last names. Both is the most common, but not by enough for Obito’s to be _weird_.

As a Genin, and Chuunin, Kakashi knows for a fact that Obito’s never met his soulmate, because he hears Obito going to Rin and talking about the possibilities sometimes. He hears Obito mention that it might be a platonic soulmate, with something like hope in his voice, and wonders just how in love Obito must be to hope his soulmate isn’t a romantic one.

As a Jounin, Kakashi knows for a fact that Obito will never meet his soulmate, because Obito is dead.

o.o.o.o.o

Here’s a fun fact: Kakashi is wrong.

o.o.o.o.o

Sakura is not an uncommon name. It’s not the most _common_  name, either, but Kakashi thinks nothing of it when he meets his new students, some thirteen years after Obito’s death.

(Thirteen is considered unlucky in some cultures, he remembers. The Land of Fire treats four and nine as unlucky, but… well. They do add up to thirteen, so maybe the foreigners are on the right track.)

Kakashi’s new students are very small, he thinks. Small and delicate and so easy to watch die, if he’s not careful.

He has to be careful, since everyone else is dead already.

(Not Gai. Gai isn’t dead, and he’s probably not going to be for a long time yet. This is a comfort, in some ways. It is an omnipresent dread, in others, because what if Gai _does_  die?)

(Kakashi doesn’t want to think about that.)

(He does anyway.)

But just because he doesn’t think his student is Obito’s missing soulmate doesn’t mean the link leaves him alone. There’s always a part of him that pays attention to the names of soulmates-that-weren’t-aren’t-maybe-just-not-yet. From the jagged, angry red scrawl on Sasuke’s wrist to the carefully penned lines on Naruto’s collarbone to the blocky blue word on Gai’s shoulder to the faint memory of the silvery cursive on Sakumo’s outer thigh, Kakashi remembers names and seeks them out. He pays attention, even when he doesn’t want to.

Even when he really, _really_ doesn’t want to.

Compared to some of those names and associations, Sakura’s seemingly coincidental same-name syndrome with Obito’s soulmate is nowhere near as painful as it could be. There are plenty of Sakuras in the world, especially in the Land of Fire.

But Kakashi pays special attention anyway, remembering Obito’s own stories of how the Uchiha had often refused to have anything to do with him because they thought he was subpar in some way, and then tries to make sure all his kids are caught up with each other, at least a little. He’d have probably focused on sharpening their strengths, otherwise, teaching Naruto to rely on his extensive stamina and Sasuke on his ability to spam ninjutsu without losing too much chakra in the process and focusing Sakura in on her book smarts.

He decides rounding them out a little might be better. He still drills them near endlessly in the basics that they’re shaky on, of course, but he tries to push them ahead of where they should be, too. They aren’t getting specialized clan training like the other students in their graduating class, so they need the extra help.

Sakura starts water-walking as soon as Kakashi sees her master tree-climbing on her first try. He sets the boys to keep on with the trees, and then guides Sakura over to the river.

She manages to take three unsteady steps before a small wave destabilizes her and sends her crashing into the water. The rocks on the bottom are mossy, and she slips easily, sending her entire body into the water instead of just from the waist down.

(Kakashi chose to keep to the shallows for this very reason, and once again the universe spits in the face of his precautions.)

“You alright there?” He asks when Sakura resurfaces.

“Y-yeah.” Sakura says, teeth chattering. It takes a few seconds for the tell-tale glow of chakra to suffuse her frame, but Kakashi is nonetheless pleased to see that she’s capable of using it to warm herself. Most don’t learn that until at least a year into Genin rank.

“Do you want to dry off?” He asks. It’s a trick question, because that would mean cutting into training time, but he needs her to learn to recognize that for herself.

“Um… no, but could I take off my outer layers?” She’s blushing as she asks, probably trying to figure out if he’s _really_ as much of a pervert as everyone says, and if that should impact her choice to lower her chances of hypothermia.

“If you feel like it.” Kakashi pulls out Icha Icha and opens to a random page, pointedly turning away from Sakura. He wonders if it would be helpful to point out that, as a twelve-year-old, she doesn’t have anything worth observing in the sense that she’s worried about. He decides it would probably be more of a blow to her self-esteem than he should deal. “You don’t have to worry about me watching unless you’d prefer that I keep an eye on you to critique your form.”

“Um.”

Kakashi figures she’s probably embarrassed that he figured out she thought he was that terrible of a person.

He doesn’t try to make things worse by calling her out on it.

“Sensei?” She says after a few minutes. “I think I’ve got–ah!”

Kakashi whirls around, book slid away into hiding and a kunai in its place, just in case the screaming was due to an attack he hadn’t sensed and not just Sakura falling through the surface of the water.

It was just Sakura falling through the surface.

He puts away his kunai and forces his heartbeat to slow down.

(The kids are _fine_.)

(It’s just training, that’s all. They’re perfectly safe inside Konoha.)

He ambles over and holds out a hand to help Sakura climb out onto the short wall at the side of the river.

She sneezes.

Kakashi wonders if he should offer to use a warm Fuuton to help her dry off, but it’s another one of those things that–

There’s a word on her back, high up and just below the strap of her sports bra.

A familiar word, in familiar handwriting.

Something tightens in the muscles across Kakashi’s nose. Something clenches in his chest. Something drops out of the bottom of his stomach.

 _Obito,_ it says.

_Obito._

“Sensei? Is something wrong?”

Kakashi makes his excuses and runs away before Sakura can ask anything else.

He throws up in the toilet in his apartment.

He wants to say that he can’t believe he failed one of his students before she was even _born_ , but honestly?

That’s just how his life goes, apparently.

o.o.o.o.o

“Sensei? You… you got really freaked out when you saw my soul mark.”

Kakashi buries his nose deeper into his book and hopes that Sakura takes the hint and goes away.

“Do you know who it is?”

She sounds so _hopeful._ A little afraid, sure, but so hopeful.

“I knew someone named Obito,” he finally says. “His soulmark _did_  say Sakura, but I hope for your sake that it’s just a coincidence.”

“Is he a bad person?” Sakura asks, because of course she does.

“No, he was one of the best people I ever met. No, Sakura, the Obito I knew is dead.” Kakashi doesn’t let his normal eye leave his book. There’s a burning in his Sharingan that he tries to ignore.

“Oh.”

Sakura is very quiet for a moment. “I guess that means I don’t have to worry about my soulmate ever trying to stop me from liking Sasuke-kun?”

Kakashi feels a spike of rage at the words and turns to glare at his student for thinking of Sasuke when he’s just told her that the man who could have been her soulmate is long dead, but stops.

The look on Sakura’s face is devastated, behind the joking facade. She’s using humor because she doesn’t know what else to do.

Kakashi goes back to his book and waits for her to leave.

o.o.o.o.o

Here’s another fun fact: Kakashi is right, even if it’s not in the way he thinks he is.

o.o.o.o.o

Sakura is seventeen when she sees Kakashi choke on thin air at the sight of the face behind the mask.

Sakura is seventeen when she realizes her soulmate is a megalomaniacal mass murderer.

Sakura is still seventeen just a few hours later when he’s nothing but a pile of ashes.

(She thinks, during what little time they’re on the same side, that they actually work very well together. They make for a good team.)

(He’s still almost twice her age, though. And the whole “worked for Madara” thing isn’t just erased from existence because of a last-minute change of heart. It’s kind of weird and the fact that she doesn’t have to worry about trying to slot him into her life is a silver lining in the fact that she’s lost any chance at her soulmate _again_.)

 

o.o.o.o.o

Sasuke calls her up four years after the war and says, “We’re experimenting and I think you should know.”

Sakura pulls the phone away from her ear to stare at it for a moment. “You… what.”

“We’re experimenting and I th–”

“You’re always experimenting.” Well, not Sasuke specifically, but Oto in general? Oh yeah. Sakura’s not surprised they’ve dragged Sasuke into it now that they aren’t technically evil anymore. “Why should I know?”

“…It involves Edo Tensei?” Sasuke sounds hesitant and uncertain. “And my Rinnegan?”

Sakura wants to slam her head through a wall, because _fucking Otogakure_ just can’t leave the laws of nature alone, can they?

o.o.o.o.o

Two years later, Sakura opens the door and gapes for all of two seconds before she slams it shut again.

She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath.

She opens the door again and looks Obito straight in the mismatched eyes. “What.”

“…what?” He repeats, sounding rather confused. It’s probably an act.

“How are you alive? And if there’s a good reason for that, how are you not in jail?”

Obito shrugs, probably to acknowledge the fact that Sakura’s questions are pretty damn valid.

“Well, Orochimaru’s really happy about messing with life and death.”

“Fucking Otogakure,” Sakura mutters. “I should have known.”

“And… well. Kakashi’s Hokage, apparently?” Obito scratches the back of his head. “Which honestly seems like a terrible idea to me, but I’m apparently full of terrible ideas, according to the few people I’ve known since my resurrection other than therapist I’ve been assigned, so that’s not up to me.”

Sakura doesn’t agree with him out loud, but she agrees that Kakashi isn’t really the best choice for Hokage. She also agrees that Obito is full of terrible ideas.

“How long have you been… alive again, then?” She asks, leaning as casually as she can against the doorframe.

“Maybe ten months?” Obito scrunches up his eyebrows. “Time is… a little fuzzy for me.”

“And nobody told me.” Sakura is _not_  happy about this. It’s not even about the whole soulmate thing; she’s one of the best medics on the goddamn _continent_ , and they didn’t let her examine the no-longer-dead guy? Rude. _Rude_.

“I think Bakashi said that you were deemed too close to the subject, so they chose Shizune instead.” Obito says. He waits a moment before he hesitantly says, “So, um… soulmates?”

Sakura closes her eyes, takes a deep breath, and opens them again. “You’re not going to go for a repeat performance of the last almost-two-decades of your life, right?”

“No, I’m… I’m pretty done with all of… that.” There’s a faint flush on Obito’s cheeks. It’s kind of adorable. “So? Should I just leave and assume you want nothing to do with me? I can understand that, considering.”

Sakura eyes him for a moment longer, then steps back and gestures inside. “Take a seat.”

He gives her a hesitant grin as he slides past her, and she smiles back.

It’s not an epic romance, really, but it’s a start. The start of _what_ , Sakura doesn’t know, but there’s definitely something in the air.

**Author's Note:**

> Since I know people are probably curious: Naruto’s soulmate is Gaara, Sasuke’s is Karin, Gai’s is Kisame, and Sakumo’s is whoever you want them to be.


End file.
